Diary of an Arcade Employee

The Last Dinosaur on DVD

I became a big fan of stop motion animation at an early age after watching a showing of The Golden Voyages of Sinbad as a Sunday afternoon TV movie. I was hooked and when I heard of anything that seemed to have any stop motion potential I would make sure to try and catch it. This was the case with the first time I saw the movie, The Last Dinosaur, which has just been re-released through the Warner Archive. I saw it in the local TV guide and plopped down on the couch for some of what I assumed would be Lost World style stop motion. I was wrong, but I was happy to be so.

The dinosaurs in The Last Dinosaur aren’t stop motion at all. Instead, the dinosaurs in this wonderful Japanese/American tokusatsu co-production are all people in dinosaur suits (think Godzilla). Now I could have been disappointed but I was not. This is one of those “bad movies” that is almost impossible to turn off once you have started. Plus for some reason I found the use of people in suits even more magical then I expected and because of that, whenever I have had the opportunity to watch it, I have done so (I think I have seen it 5 times in total).

Since it is getting increasingly difficult to “catch” a movie like this on TV, I decided to pick it up through the Warner Archive. The film has not been re-mastered, but this is one of the best versions of the film that I have ever seen, much cleaner and crisper, plus it is nice to not have the subtitles burned into the film the whole time. So , if you like Godzilla style movies or just like giving a film the ol’ MST3K treatment, stop by the Warner Archive and order up a copy of The Last Dinosaur. Do so quickly and you can be enjoying scenes like this….